This is the personal blog of Sarah Marslender. A couple years ago, I moved to Kuwait with my family. This blog is a place for me to update family and friends. Here I talk about running, parenting, faith, teaching, cooking and baking, reading and writing, exploring, and learning to be content. Sometimes I overthink. You can call me on that.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

friday five: only good things

1. Good classes this week. My sophomores are reading Catcher in the Rye and had a great discussion about the narrator, Holden, and what his deal is. I also got a chance to talk with them about their poetry portfolios. Sometimes I dread reading student poetry (I know I shouldn't admit that) because so often it's about love. Gaggy love stuff. But this semester a number of them turned out some completely non-gaggy love stuff poetry. I was particularly impressed by a number of the guys' portfolios: they experimented with words and phrases and much of it worked really well. I'll ask permission to showcase a few of my favorites.

2. Speedwork today went well and I actually managed to set a running date tomorrow. My friend Stetson will meet me for a run outside in the morning. I haven't run outside in about a month and a half. Yikes. Super excited. If he has to bail, I'll still do it. All hills because that's all there is around here.

3. Overnight Claire learned to sit on her own. I tuck a crescent-shaped pillow around her just in case she tips back. She's also getting more insistent about moving toward the toys she sees and wants. It's fun to watch her figure things out, and to listen to her chatter and squeal.

4. Fact: Emeralds are one of Colombia's most important exports. Fact: Tomorrow I will go to a jeweler and talk design for my emerald ring. Fact: My emerald ring will remind me of my time in Colombia. (Now read all of those in a Dwight voice).

5. Musical tonight. We're going to Bolivar's production of All Shook Up, a rendition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night set to Elvis music. If you can imagine. I know a number of the students in the production and our friends Josh and Stetson helped run rehearsals. I'm pretty sure they dream the musical at this point. And Justin helped build parts of the set, scraps of which are still in his classroom. So we'll go and hope that Claire conks out between poodle skirt numbers. I hope she's not fussy, I hope she's not fussy, I hope she's not fussy. Now I'll click my heels three times.